[project86]

Just got word back from the publisher.

With the shuttering of both sites, the plan is to port all existing InnerFidelity and Audiostream content back to the Stereophile umbrella. No idea on a time frame but at some point (soon?) all the content should find a permanent home there. That's good news for the 50+ articles I contributed over the years, but more importantly for the many hundreds of measurements and articles Tyll did.

Seems like it was the perfect storm of Rafe not being a good fit and thus readership declining, plus Covid taking a huge toll on many industries. I still think they had (or would still have?) a chance at reviving both sites with the right editors, but I'm guessing budgets are razor thin right now... so it's just not the time. Perhaps if things bounce back to something like "normal" in a year or two, they could have a grand reopening of sorts. But that's just speculation on my part.

 

[rantng]

Just got word back from the publisher.

With the shuttering of both sites, the plan is to port all existing InnerFidelity and Audiostream content back to the Stereophile umbrella. No idea on a time frame but at some point (soon?) all the content should find a permanent home there. That's good news for the 50+ articles I contributed over the years, but more importantly for the many hundreds of measurements and articles Tyll did.

Seems like it was the perfect storm of Rafe not being a good fit and thus readership declining, plus Covid taking a huge toll on many industries. I still think they had (or would still have?) a chance at reviving both sites with the right editors, but I'm guessing budgets are razor thin right now... so it's just not the time. Perhaps if things bounce back to something like "normal" in a year or two, they could have a grand reopening of sorts. But that's just speculation on my part.

That's great news! It would've been a shame to lose such a font of knowledge. Happy for you too as well @project86 considering all the hard work you put into your articles. Thanks for your contributions to innerfidelity & head-fi!

 

[catscratch]

Thanks for the update. They should have communicated this more clearly but at least we got something. Hopefully, if they do decide to restart the site they'll vet the new chief editor a little bit more carefully.

 

[Whazzzup]

Meh, they come they go. My gear is forever

 

[amartignano]

Innerfidelity content begins to appear on stereophile, search for example Sundara yep!!

 

[amartignano]

And, by the way, until now at least, Tyll's and Katz's contents seem all online, and I don't see rafelifestyle contents anywhere. What a pity

 

[gimmeheadroom]

cdn.innerfidelity.com appears offline

 

[amartignano]

cdn.innerfidelity.com appears offline

Yep, it is no more. Most reviews content is now online on Stereophile site. But:
- the measurements not related to a review are not there
- the complete list of measurements was not uploaded
- the articles related to measurements problems and techniques were not uploaded
- last wall of fame (full of brief and interesting sound considerations) was not uploaded

 

[project86]

I was told the content would all be migrated at some point. So far I see what appears to be a fairly complete collection of Tyll's articles, plus all of the Bob Katz content (as far as I can tell so far). I do notice a few missing sections as noted above, so hopefully those aren't forgotten.

My articles are not up yet, with a single exception (our ToTL Madness CIEM roundup). That one shows several of us on the byline, but if you click my name it doesn't bring up any other posts. Same with ljokerl who contributed a good number of IEM reviews over the years. Even clicking Tyll's name on there doesn't lead to the rest of his articles though, so it appears to be broken or perhaps a work in progress.

I also lament the fact that no comments have survived the transfer thus far. One of my favorite aspects of InnerFidelity was actually the readers, who had so many insightful things to add. Questions which allowed us opportunity to explore ideas beyond the scope of the original post. Updates about the experiences people had had with the product in question. And even some very knowledgeable industry members who would chime in about the design, or just make other observations. Overall it was one of the best examples of a productive comments section I have ever encountered (and plenty of well-known audio review sites are the exact opposite) so I'm sad to see it wiped out.

I'll check in with the publisher in a week or two if things don't update from here.

 

[amartignano]

I think that for the comments, there is a problem of different user database between innerfidelity web-site and Stereophile. Real pity they are no more.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I was told the content would all be migrated at some point. So far I see what appears to be a fairly complete collection of Tyll's articles, plus all of the Bob Katz content (as far as I can tell so far). I do notice a few missing sections as noted above, so hopefully those aren't forgotten.

My articles are not up yet, with a single exception (our ToTL Madness CIEM roundup). That one shows several of us on the byline, but if you click my name it doesn't bring up any other posts. Same with ljokerl who contributed a good number of IEM reviews over the years. Even clicking Tyll's name on there doesn't lead to the rest of his articles though, so it appears to be broken or perhaps a work in progress.

I also lament the fact that no comments have survived the transfer thus far. One of my favorite aspects of InnerFidelity was actually the readers, who had so many insightful things to add. Questions which allowed us opportunity to explore ideas beyond the scope of the original post. Updates about the experiences people had had with the product in question. And even some very knowledgeable industry members who would chime in about the design, or just make other observations. Overall it was one of the best examples of a productive comments section I have ever encountered (and plenty of well-known audio review sites are the exact opposite) so I'm sad to see it wiped out.

I'll check in with the publisher in a week or two if things don't update from here.

Nobody asked me but I can live without the user comments. There were some good ones but maybe mostly junk posts. To Tyll's credit he didn't squelch anybody, unlike Ragin' Rafe.

Still, the tests... How can they take that offline? It's criminal.

 

[amartignano]

The tests...
How can they take that offline? It's criminal.

This

 

[Currawong]

I think I got most of the site using a couple of different tools and some manual URL editing.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

https://www.stereophile.com/category/innerfidelity

 

[project86]

Thanks for the link, pretty easy to digest when looking that way.

Still missing all of mine, plus some of Tyll's special articles. Like I notice the entire Big Sound 2015 series is gone. That was an ambitious project which involved Tyll gathering about six figures worth of headphones and amps, plus correspondingly nice DACs and and streamers, then digging and and listening. He also involved the community, with several folks coming by for a listen and documenting their experiences. Probably one of my favorite projects and it's just gone at this point - hopefully it makes a reappearance.

Our later, somewhat similar project "ToTL Madness" for custom IEMs is up (I linked to it a few posts back) so I'm not sure there is any rhyme or reason to it... unless it's still in progress. We'll see.